Introduction and Initial Suite

A Tools, or ABODE™ Tools, are so-called Design tools.  The design tools are especially made to accelerate the design, development and test phases. Through the use of modern techniques problems can be specified in natural languages. This helps to let business people get more in control of their work supported by business processes and business activities.

 

The business logic is defined in business terms and understandable by business people. In this way they can help so-called rule analysts to adapt and changes processes by changing the logic, directly test the results of the change and deploy the changed components. Through this approach already available processes and activities can be changed in a fraction of the time otherwise necessary.

 

Another option is the reuse of business solutions, business processes, or business activities that have been defined in other organizations. Or even use the ones defined within the one’s own organization in a slightly different way. Through the use of the  GEFF™ and the BFM finding the appropriate components has intuitively easy.

 

As stated earlier the structure of the GEFF™ will be used for the BFM. In the BFM “enriched” enterprise functions or business functions can be stored and maintained. Business functions are enterprise functions enriched with business objects, business rules and user interaction specifications. Through the use of a Business Rule Engine (BRE) the business functions become executable: the work like single software applications with which the user can interact, or the are working batch-oriented. These business functions can be chained together into (executable) business processes.

 

Within the design environment, business objects can be easily changed. It is possible to add new business objects, relate them together, change their properties, etc. The changes to these business objects in the so-called conceptual object model can be used to adapt the database schema. Thus the changes to functionality (business functions), logic (business rules), and memory (business objects) can be directly used to test the functional requirements. This direct use is called DME or Direct Model Execution.

 

For smaller organizations, these tested business functions can directly be deployed. Of course it will sometimes be necessary to fill the database, change the data, migrate objects, etc. For this there are also tools available.

 

The Design Tools are grouped together in so-called Maturity Suites. Depending on the maturity of the organization a specific Suite can be selected.  However, the organization is not limited by the Suite offerings: different tools of different suites may be combined.